Ukraine is threatening to punish European pharmaceutical companies that are still operating in Russia and wants EU sanctions on Russia to apply to medicine, POLITICO reported in December.
The EU has imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia but has exempted medicines due to humanitarian concerns. The report said that the exemption hasn’t “sat well” with Ukraine as Kyiv wants Russia under a total embargo.
The Ukrainian government has taken some steps toward punishing the European pharmaceutical companies over their business in Russia by granting itself the power to ban medicines from the Ukrainian market. The idea is to prohibit the sale of any goods produced by pharmaceutical companies that haven’t left Russia.
So far, Ukraine has taken action against one company, Gedeon Richter, which is based in Hungary. In October, Ukraine’s Health Ministry said 35 medicines produced by the Hungarian company were being temporarily banned, although the POLITICO report said the products haven’t been officially pulled from the market.
Responding to the move, Gedeon Richter said it was “incomprehensible” and warned it endangered the supply of medicine to the Ukrainian people. Ukrainian officials insist the war-torn country has enough alternatives on the market so Ukrainians won’t have to go without medicine.
Brussels is not happy with Ukraine’s position and fears the country is trying to weaponize medicine while also hurting European business interests. According to a document obtained by POLITICO, Ukraine has named a total of 19 companies that it could target, the majority of which are based in the EU.
Sanctions imposed by the US and its allies typically have exemptions for medicine and food, although the policies still cause shortages of the goods as sanctions can discourage companies from doing business with a country altogether. For example, sanctions on Iran are said to have exemptions for humanitarian goods, but they have still caused medicine shortages and increased food insecurity in the country.
Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s deputy economy minister, acknowledged in comments to POLITICO that there is a moral question about sanctioning medicine but still called for a full embargo on Russia.
“There is a big debate about to what extent it is moral [for pharmaceutical companies] to withdraw from Russia, because it’s a matter of life and death,” he said. “For us it is, as well, a matter of life and death. And we advocate for the fullest possible embargo on Russian products and economic activity in Russia.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously called for the collective punishment of Russians for the war launched by President Vladimir Putin. When he demanded Western countries ban all Russian travelers, Zelensky said the “whole population” of Russia was at fault for the invasion.
Kachka and other Ukrainian officials downplayed the idea that Kyiv and Brussels were at odds over the pharmaceutical issues, but the POLITICO report said it’s not resolved. The threats to prohibit European medicines have received criticism from Ukraine’s anti-corruption body, which warned Ukrainian drug makers could bribe the government to ban its competitors.
This is starting to look like a three ring circus…
“Ukraine wants” – Kiev regime is absolutely subordinated to neocons. The only thing what Zelensky and his team are wanting – more money for themselves for the service they are providing for American imperialists and personal security after Kiev regime collapses.
They don’t want, they demand.
They demand because they want.
and they can never get enough.
Maybe some of them got enough but they can’t get out from the groove. Neocons are keeping them on a very short leash.
If they do get out they better be anonymous and get ss protection.
Neocons are OK with Z clamping down on news media in Kiev. Reported by the Libertarian Institute. Everything else as well.
More of punishing Ukrainians to spite Russian civilians. Such a US gov’t move. I guess a lot of the US tax dollars will now go toward feeding the US Pharm monster to supply those drugs. More disaster capitalism. All the pigs gotta theirs at the trough while everyone is zombie walked into this conflict for oligarchs’ wealth.
“Ukraine Wants EU to Scrap Medicine Exemption for Russia Sanctions Kyiv is looking to punish European pharmaceutical companies that are still doing business in Russia”
Ukraine wants is a tired old mantra that sounds like a spoiled 5 year old child who wants and wants.
Who can blame Ukraine when America acts like a drunken old fool parent that gives a child anything they want including loaded guns.
Are the Zios getting jealous?
How is so much idiocy even possible? How insane can the Europeans be, all they have to do is to stop funding the Commander-in-chief in Kiev and put the clown in his place, he is running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.
But what for, he would be replaced with another chicken with it’s head cut off, since that is all they have in charge in the EU and USA/NATO. The best they can come up with.
This is a moral issue as well as a political one. The two issues need to be separate, which does not seem likely…. Regardless of reasons for the situation that exists, the world needs to maintain its humanitarian principles…
The moral issue is also a political one. Many volunteers on Russian side are talking about their religious motivation. They believe they are defending, among other things, also Christian and Muslim morality.
Zelensky soon to go into EXILE in the US just like that gangster Bolsanero.
He can give Bolsonaro piano lessons…
Geneva convention? what happened to that?
Does the Geneva convention have anything about what countries are supposed to do when deciding with what companies or countries they wan to trade?
The geneva convention has nothing to do with whom you wish to trade with, nor did I claim it did.
The geneva convention has to do with collective punishment, which the geneva convention is decidedly against. This relates to the article because of this paragraph:
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously called for the collective punishment of Russians for the war launched by President Vladimir Putin. When he demanded Western countries ban all Russian travelers, Zelensky said the ‘whole population’ of Russia was at fault for the invasion.”
OK thanks for clearing up the issue. When the Geneva convention is against collective punishment then that is on the individual level i.e. person A should not be punished because he was a member of e.g. the SS, we have to show that person A committed a crime it is not enough that he was in a organization that committed many crimes.
Thus as I see it Zelenskyy is not calling for the kind of collective punishment of individual Russians by calling for the west to deny them to travel to their countries – if that was a punishment, then the west is on a daily basis punishing a lot of individuals from a lot of countries.
If we were to deny the Russians the ability to seek refugee status in our countries then it would be a punishment, but denying them tourist visas or making it much harder to get a visa does not rise to the level of collective punishment as far as I know – otherwise we have in the west been responsible for Geneva violations for a very long time.
Zelenskyy didn’t ask us to cancel their tourist visas. He asked us to stop selling them food and medicine, the types of economic goods that primarily affect the masses. Did you even read the article?
More of punishing Ukrainians to spite Russian civilians. Such a US gov’t move. I guess a lot of the US tax dollars will now go toward feeding the US Pharm monster to supply those drugs. More disaster capitalism. All the pigs gotta theirs at the trough while everyone is zombie walked into this conflict for oligarchs’ wealth.
Well, like Old Bear says, “There comes a point when the people of a nation need to be held responsible for the governments they choose/tolerate,” right? Or does that just go in one direction?
There is the deep state in control of government, the media and elections. Together they manage to manipulate the voters, decades of indoctrination and manipulation of the population pays off.
The indoctrination starts in kindergarten.
True.
And true in every major polity, including Russian and China.
At this time less so in Russia and China. The democracies were not always that bad. Once upon a time they had some real statesmen and members of congress too.
So you’re ready to be punished for all of the US war crimes, even though the US is not a functioning democracy? *You may get your wish if this escalates to nuclear war.
Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy
This is sociopathic behavior. And will backfire, because the Russians will know whose idea it is. Meanwhile, this will benefit some corporations, but will be cheered on as heroism.
Reagan started out with union busting when he fired all air controllers on strike for better working conditions and better pay. Socialists and communists were demonized and still are.
No. I don’t support collective punishment.
Unlike the commenters here constantly crowing about how Europeans are going to freeze to death, etc., but whining about rhetoric that runs in the other direction.
When bad weather hits the nation here we cry too. Europe is being economically demolished, the military destruction will follow if Biden gets his way. Remember how this nation carried on when the WTC TOWERS were destroyed, that was nothing compared to a real war.
It is easy to like war and play to be the heroes if it happens to others on other continents and our MIC, and Finance make the money.
We take their blood and lives and pay the bullets the MIC people produce.
They may not freeze, but they will lose some industry due to the higher costs of LNG from the US.
From this article excerpted:
EU Admits New Cold War Is Not ‘Democracy Vs. Autocracy’
The top EU diplomat instead recognized that the new cold war is a struggle in which economic “systems are in rivalry,”…In this same speech, Borrell confessed, “Our prosperity was based on China and Russia.” He acknowledged that the West’s neoliberal economic model was “based on cheap energy coming from Russia,” “access to the big China market, and low-paid Chinese workers”.
https://popularresistance.org/eu-admits-new-cold-war-is-not-democracy-vs-autocracy-on-our-side-there-are-a-lot-of-authoritarian-regimes/
Loss of those will certainly create a greater difficulty to maintain some markets.
I’m having an increasingly difficult time feeling sorry for Ukrainian civilians, nearly as much in fact as I’m having for Europeans and Americans.
Western civilization has become so thoroughly dumbed down that there’s little left to save.
There comes a point when the people of a nation need to be held responsible for the governments they choose/tolerate. The government of Ukraine is a toilet, and of necessity reflects the society which identifies with it. Same goes for the USA and its European subsidy.
“There comes a point when the people of a nation need to be held responsible for the governments they choose/tolerate.”
Zelenskyy routinely — and correctly — gets negative remarks here for saying exactly the same thing.
As well he should. He is a puppet and well fed oligarch, acting as a protagonist in this absurdist play.
I wouldn’t agree that Zelensky is oligarch, if we mean by oligarchs those who are using their money for the political influence. In his case, it is other way around, he became very rich because they made him the head of the state and allowed him to be rich.
He was rich before then. He was hiding money in the Caymans (Pandora papers). He was financed by a richer oligarch who also backed the far right battalions. That’s why he was a perfect stooge, playing the role he did in a movie. He may not have had that level of super wealth before, but I guarantee he does now. The Pentagon has failed every single audit they ever had and has never had to explain where money actually went.
He’s not gonna spend any of his own money, like most oligarchs don’t. He will spend yours.
Remember this?
He never was even near that rich as his sponsor Kolomoisky, and he never was in politics. He made his money as showman. Kolomoisky promoted him to politics (obviously after the consultations with Americans). They picked him up exactly because he never was in politics before, so he could promise anything. People knew him as showman and actor in a popular film where he played the role of president (opposite to what he is now). They wanted the elections to look more or less democratic. The real candidates from the opposition were banned.
To reiterate what I said:
This guy is a comedian, but as far as US media he is covering this more responsibly than any “news” outlet. Video at link
Pentagon Admits They Can’t Account For Half Their Assets
…this is not simply a matter of boring accounting. Trillions in unaccounted outlays, if that’s what’s involved here, is trillions of our tax dollars being spent without our knowledge. If that’s the case, we’re talking about the biggest government financial deception in the history of the country. …Why is our government now systematically hiding these adjustments from public sight?”
..For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher… DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress – representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions… according to government records and interviews with current and former DoD officials, congressional sources, and independent experts.”
Of the $21 trillion over 15 years, there was actually one year alone that had $6.5 Trillion unaccounted-for financial adjustments. In one year! If that’s not an enormous fraud, I don’t know what it is. We need to start using the word “fraud!” We can tell it’s fraud because people have tried to cover up the goddamn paper trail. Back to The Nation’s investigation — “Indeed, more than 16,000 records that might reveal either the source or the destination of some of that $6.5 Trillion, had been ‘removed’…
https://popularresistance.org/pentagon-admits-they-cant-account-for-half-their-assets-amid-latest-audit-failure/
Yes, that is what I said. But wars are money laundering operations.
He started to hide his money after he became president. Before that he had no reason to hide his money. I don’t know how much he had, but he wasn’t the best paid showman. Far from that. And obviously, it was his main income before he went to the politics.
You need to read more on the US in Afghanistan. There was just piles of money. The money was, in some cases, supposed to be for training military, while the army only existed on paper. When a US marine questioned a superior on this, he was told to keep quiet.
What Zelensky has to do with Afghanistan?
I was pointing out what happens when piles of unaccounted for funds are flooded into an area.
I presume, most of those unaccounted money go back to American politicians who are responsible for their distribution.
Zelensky got in touch with American money only after he became the head of state. His electoral campaign was financed by Kolomoisky.
Yes, but are you seriously considering that puppets did not benefit? (Afghanistan?). And now there is huge amounts of (unaccounted for) money being transferred to Ukraine.
Zelensky became a neocon’s puppet when he became the president. Before that he was just an actor and showman. He wasn’t smeared with politics before. To me it looks, he sold his soul for money in 2019.
Yes, but he was hiding assets. That gives you a window into character before he was elected.
They talked about his hidden assets after he became president, not before.
And?
You are insisting that he was superrich before he became the president.
No, I conceded WAY ABOVE that he didn’t have that level of money but I opined that he does now.
But to me $30 million is super rich, maybe not as rich as some, but clearly corrupt, or easily corrupted, evidenced by his hiding assets.
BTW, Zelensky has now taken the oligarch’s money toward war efforts.
Where I told that puppets don’t benefit? I told that Zelensky became rich after they made him the president.
Why are you still arguing?
BTW, he may not be a billionaire, but he is way past middle class:
…unlike his predecessor, Zelensky never was a billionaire. He’s currently worth roughly $20 million, based on reporting by Forbes Ukraine. Additional reporting by Forbes US puts that number at less than $30 million. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/04/20/president-zelensky-is-not-a-billionaire-so-how-much-is-he-worth/?sh=31b489d35bb0
Arguing about what? That Zelensky wasn’t poor? There is a difference to be above the middle and to be one of Ukrainian oligarchs. Before 2019 he was nobody in politics. All Ukrainian oligarchs are deeply involved in the politics.
So? He was bought off by an oligarch, hid funds offshore. You don’t think that made for the perfect new puppet for the US? The US sanctioned Kolomoisky a year before the war for fraud.
Zelensky and his oligarch along with other partners set up a network of businesses that concealed activity:
The documents show that Zelensky and his partners in a television production company, Kvartal 95, set up a network of offshore firms dating back to at least 2012, the year the company began making regular content for TV stations owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, an oligarch dogged by allegations of multi-billion-dollar fraud. The offshores were also used by Zelensky associates to purchase and own three prime properties in the center of London.
The documents also show that just before he was elected, he gifted his stake in a key offshore company, the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to his business partner — soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of giving up his shares, the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now belongs to his wife.
https://new-economy.gr/2022/03/13/zelensky-pandora/
I only know that Zelensky has a flat in Crimea. He could easy buy it with his income from showbusiness. Definitely he bought it before 2014.
It looks, Kolomoisky used him to hide his own money. Kolomoisky had a lot of everything in Ukraine before 2014. Maybe Zelensky was richer than he looked but definitely he wasn’t one of those who influenced Ukrainian politics before Kolomoisky brought him there.
Why are you arguing when I said that in my past comments?
I am just expressing my opinion.
Zelensky does not demonstrate any degree of self-awareness AFAICT, so I don’t regard anything he says as anything other than the day’s script.
It doesn’t matter who is voted for. That was abundantly apparent when a democratically elected Ukrainian president was overthrown, because of US instigation and half of the population there (especially the far right who wanted to overthrow every president since), not all.
In the US, there is a managed democracy. You can vote but it doesn’t mean jacksh!t in terms of policy. Plus you only get to choose from pre-selected plutocrat/oligarch choices at the federal level. And if they differ, they quickly fall into line in office.
Do we really think that people are going to have a huge uprising in Russia to satisfy Ukraine?
I’m not a MAGA, but they actually rampaged for change of government, and based on this assessment shouldn’t they be heroes, even though half the country disagreed?
The systems in all three countries are corrupt in varying degrees but moving closer. It will likely take a humongous uprising to disassemble any of them. And then as revolutions go, the most extreme usually wins.
“I’m not a MAGA, but they actually rampaged for change of government”
They rampaged for a wannabe king.
And? Like I said, I’m not a MAGA. But when people riot for change of government how is it great for Ukraine under the control of N@zis during the deadly protests? But not the MAGAs? And why is it okay to punish Russians for not overthrowing a president they elected?
Did you vote for your country to send the largest check to the Pentagon and a huge amount to Ukraine? I didn’t. And chances are that would’ve happened, and will happen, no matter which team is in office.
To conclude, I think these type of sanctions should also be considered war crimes. You are intentionally targeting innocent civilians for harm or death.
I misread your comment. I think.
Underneath their hatred for anything even remotely left wing, MAGA comments are almost identical to not liberal ideas as liberal now means being a slave to corporate America, but ideas to the left of Sanders and AOC. Their hatred of Big Pharma exceeds the hatred lefties have for Big Pharma. They are starting to see the need for money from SOMEWHERE to flow to people they call failures – basically nonmillionaires, which includes themselves.
If they can stand to help blacks, gays, lesbians, transgender people, etc as a price for getting help themselves, then things will change quickly. Big Pharma will invest heavily in keeping that hatred boiling. Their success is at stake.
I love the part where ukraine is like “If you’re going to give them life saving medication, then you can’t give it to us!”
Ok, I guess. If you’re that desperate to die.
Well that would kill more Russians but presumably sick folks aren’t exactly combatants. Dick move but I think the hate is strong here. Also asking your allies to suffer economically to support your dickish behavior also a little dickish
It is about as ‘sound’ as the Russian argument for bombing the electricity infrastructure, in that while there will be a lot of (mostly) civilian suffering, it will also hit the ability to sustain the military efforts at the front. I.e. the time to or cost of healing a soldier will be significantly higher. But yes we agree, bit of a dick move.